1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to customizing data streamed to a user, and in particular, to a method, apparatus, and article of manufacture for ingesting a user's personal information/preferences and automatically returning a customized stream/experience based thereon.
2. Description of the Related Art
Portable music players (e.g., iPods™, iPhone™, MP3 players, etc.) have been adopted and used by users throughout the world. Similarly, social networking sites such as MySpace™ and Facebook™ have become increasingly popular. It is desirable to provide a new or existing user on a social networking site with a customized experience based on the user's interests with little to no effort by the user (i.e., irrespective of the user's activities on the social networking site). Prior art mechanisms fail to provide an easy and efficient mechanism for a user to create a personalized network on a social networking site that is customized based on the user's preferences with minimal user effort. Such problems may be better understood with an explanation of prior art portable music devices and social networking sites.
Social networking sites each have their own unique user interface, terminology, preferences, etc. In addition, once a user has selected a social networking site, the user becomes increasingly invested in the selected site through usage of the site. It is difficult to get the user to switch to an alternative social network once a user has become invested in a particular site. As a result, significant competition exists (between social networking sites) to entice both initial users and users of alternative social networks. To entice users, social networks attempt to simplify and ease the adoption process while also customizing the content for a particular user in a transparent/semi-transparent manner.
Prior art methods provide no capability to customize content (with minimal user effort) without use of the social network itself by the user. For example, to customize content, prior art systems may present a series of questions to a user (e.g., marital status, likes/dislikes, preferred music type/category, etc.). In addition, to provide recommendations (e.g., music, movies, food, products, advertising, etc.) to such users (that are particularly relevant and customized for that user) requires significant use of the social network itself by the user. The more time the user spends on a social network, the more customized the information becomes that is displayed to the user. Accordingly, there is no capability to provide initial customization or continued customization on user's preferences that are unrelated to the time spent on the social network itself.
Such customization may take various forms depending on the social network utilized. For example, on the MySpace™ social networking site, particular advertisements, featured games, and news may be displayed. Additionally, various artists/musicians may be displayed and news relating to a user's friends/identified musicians may be displayed (e.g., via an “activity stream” for a defined category such as friends, status, photos, music, bulletins, videos, links, apps, blogs, events, etc.). In this regard, an “activity stream” shows what a user's friends are doing (such as recent photo updates and photo uploads). One major task with using a new social network is that of identifying “friends” on the social network. Further, a user may be very interested in music and would like to have bands of interest identified for him/her without having to spend a significant amount of time on the social network. Prior art mechanisms fail to provide such customization without a significant investment of time by the user utilizing the social network itself.
In conjunction with the above, prior art mechanisms fail to integrate and/or utilize a user's preferences (i.e., based on data external from and independent from social networking site data) on a social networking site. In this regard, a user may have many preferences or may have established profiles independent from social network site data. For example, a user may have a media viewing/listening device (e.g., MP3™ player, cellular phone, personal digital assistant [PDA], computer, iPod™, iPad™, Nook™, etc.) that is frequently used by the user. Personalized information about the user may be captured by software based on the music player. For example, a media player application (e.g., iTunes™, Windows™ Media Player™, QuickTime™, Android Market™, etc.) may store information about the user's viewing/listening preferences. Such information may include for example, the content of a user's music library, last song played, songs most played, type of movie watched, etc. may be stored. However, such personalized information is not utilized by social networking sites to customize their website experience.
Alternatively, websites frequented by a user may also have a profile for such a user. Such profile information may include books purchased (e.g., via Amazon™, BarnesNNoble™, etc.), movies rented/watched (e.g., via Netflix™). Further yet, information about the user's location (e.g., via global positioning system [GPS]) may be stored by cellular phone companies, in a user's cellular phone (or other GPS device). In this regard, a variety of types of personalized/customized information for a user may be available from a variety of sources. However, prior art methodologies do not utilize nor access such information to provide a customized user experience on a social networking site.
In view of the above, what is needed is an efficient and easy mechanism to utilize a user's preferences/personalized information to customize data and information displayed on a social networking site.